It recently came to my attention that the subject of my research on neoliberalism in Cambodia had become the focus of a commentary on New Mandala. I read Maylee Thavat’s (2010) ‘The neoliberal bogeyman of Cambodia’ with a combination of amusement and bemusement. I was amused at how an account so full of holes could pass itself off as adding anything of value to scholarly discussion, and bemused in the same sense by the caricature that has been painted, not only of my own work, but of the significant gains that human geographers in particular have made to theorisations of neoliberalism over the past decade. Elsewhere, Thavat has taken to hijacking the title of my recent book, “Cambodia’s Neoliberal Order: Violence, Authoritarianism and the Contestation of Public Space” for use in her own research (see Thavat 2011), which is fair game I suppose, but one might expect that in being so bold, there would have been some communication between the two of us, where our positions were clarified, debate ensued, and due to some irreconcilable disagreement, Thavat would have felt no choice but to take my research head on and use it as the primary focus of her own work. The reality is that nothing even remotely as dramatic as this has actually occurred. Thavat and I have never communicated, she has never sought to engage me on any level, and has instead decided to throw down the gauntlet in cyber realm after what appears to be only a very slight engagement and ‘liberal’ reading of my work. That being said, it excites me that my work has made some sort of impact, and I would like to take this opportunity to clear up some of fallacies that Thavat constructs both with regards to my own arguments, and the way in which neoliberalism (or more accurately neoliberalisation) has been theorised in the academic literature.

One of the primary myths that Thavat seems content to perpetuate is the idea that neoliberalism is nothing more than a top-down juggernaut, imposed from somewhere ‘outside’ on seemingly hapless and unwitting states. She suggests that, “Neoliberalism is yet another catchall phrase that appears to say everything but nothing.” This falls in line with some of the standard critiques that have emerged in the literature, which suggest that neoliberalism suffers from promiscuity (i.e., involved with too many theoretical perspectives) and omnipotence (i.e., identified as the cause of a wide variety of social, political and economic changes) (Clarke 2008). Indeed, there are commentators who have been troubled by the ‘larger conversation’ that neoliberalism invokes, or disillusioned by the potential explanatory power of the concept, and there now exists a willingness to proclaim neoliberalism a ‘necessary illusion’ (Castree 2006) or simply that ‘there is no such thing’ (Barnett 2005). These misgivings differ from Thavat insofar as they are centered on the contemporary pervasiveness of neoliberalism in academia and a concern that by constituting neoliberalism as a powerful, expansive, and self-reproducing logic, we lend it the appearance of monolithic and beyond reproach, which is in fact the exact simplistic and ill-informed version of neoliberalism that Thavat appears to encourage.

What is missing from Thavat’s account then is appropriate consideration for the problematics of representing neoliberalism as an omnipresence (i.e., treating it as a universal or global phenomenon). Peck and Tickell’s (2002) processed-based analysis of neoliberalisation along with Brenner and Theodore’s (2002) concept of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ have been instrumental in contributing to a complete overhaul in the way that scholars theorise neoliberalism, as emphasis is now placed on multiple hybrid forms. In other words, in concentrating exclusively on an externally produced neoliberalism, Thavat purposefully neglects the local geographies of existing political economic circumstances and institutional frameworks, where variability, internal constitution, societal influences, and individual agency all play a role in (re)producing, circulating, and facilitating neoliberalism’s advance. While a distinct lack of recognition for this character of neoliberalism demonstrates just how little reading Thavat has done on the subject, this does not dissuade her from throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater as she calls neoliberalism “a handy, off the rack, explanation that appears to be ‘one size fits all,’” where “proponents of the term have sought to escape this criticism by arguing that neoliberalism, like globalisation before it, gives way to ‘local articulations.’” She says she “find[s]this disclaimer somewhat disingenuous.” Yet the real insincerity here is more obviously Thavat’s willingness to ignore the literature. In impetuously dismissing the idea of ‘local articulations,’ she actively rejects the profound theoretical insights that scholars have made over the past several years in rescinding the caricatural version of neoliberalism. In one fell swoop of epistemological grandeur, Thavat reconstructs this effigy by suggesting, “neoliberalism, like globalisation and modernisation before it, is the new academic bogeyman.”

To Thavat, “as a lens of analysis or methodological framework [neoliberalism] is insufficient to adequately uncover or understand the complexities of state society relations, especially at the micro level of people’s lives, their labours and livelihoods.” This would be a worthwhile point of departure in critiquing the way neoliberalism has been applied in academic inquiry, except for the fact that those scholars who investigate neoliberalism and its manifold implications have already beaten her to the punch. Human geographers in particular have long recognised that to exclusively focus on external forces is insufficient in accounting for the profusion of local variegations that presently comprise the neoliberal project. It is imperative to recognise and account for the traction of neoliberalisation on its travels around the globe, and to attend to how neoliberalism is always necessarily co-constituted with other existing circumstances. Such polychromatic thinking has prompted a growing tendency in the literature to move away from discussions of neoliberalism and towards a new language of ‘neoliberalisation,’ which acknowledges the multiple geographies of neoliberalism on the ground, through attention to contextual specificity and local experimentation, or in other words the complexities of state society relations and the micro-politics of people’s lives (see Brenner et al. 2010; England and Ward 2007; Purcell 2008; Smith et al. 2008; Springer 2010c). As a series of protean processes, individual neoliberalisations are considered to ‘materialise’ quite differently as mutated and hybrid forms of neoliberalism, depending on and influenced by geographical landscapes, historical contexts, institutional legacies, and embodied subjectivities (Peck 2001; Peck and Tickell 2002). I am hard-pressed to understand how such focused attention on the particularisms of place relates to the simplistic narrative of an over-generalised global neoliberalism that Thavat wants to construct.

Despite Thavat’s problematic assumption of a sweeping dispersion of a ‘pure’ or ‘paradigmatic’ neoliberalism that has supposedly been slapdash blanketed over Cambodia in my work, I follow the single most important idea geographers have lent to theories of neoliberalism, which is to acknowledge that ‘neoliberalism’ itself is an abstraction. The discourse of neoliberalism proceeds in such a way that it conceals the geographical variations and contingencies that necessarily exist between different political economic contexts. Thus, by recognising the transfigurations and articulations of neoliberalism as it spreads around the globe, including into Cambodia, I have attempted to engage a critical geopolitics whereby it only makes sense to speak of a series of partial, shifting, and thoroughly hybridised ‘neoliberalisations,’ rather than a rigid, universal, and fully realised ‘neoliberalism.’ For geographers to insist that in every specific instance where neoliberal ideology has been adopted, there will necessarily be messiness that results in a series of geopolitically distinct hybrids should not actually be all that difficult to accept or envision. Such thinking simply reflects the actual nature of any policy legacy or institutional inheritance. For example, colonialism’s arrival into an array of political economic situations was in every instance an untidy and thoroughly contingent process, including its penetration into Cambodia. The violence meted out in the promotion of colonialism, the different actors and agents involved in its advance, and the varying degrees of accommodation and resistance colonial governments were ultimately met with demands that we acknowledge a sense of heterogeneity in any consideration of a location as ‘colonised.’ Such messiness does not suggest that colonialism was unsuccessful in Cambodia or any of the specific contexts in which this version of capitalism unfolded. Most scholars recognise that Cambodia was in fact colonised, where attentiveness to its particular geographies, contested uptake, hybridised forms, and mutated institutional matrixes in comparison to other parts of Indochina, or more dramatically to English or Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia, simply serves to highlight the plurality that colonialism engendered. Thus, instead of ‘colonialism’, we have ‘colonialisms,’ whereby any notion of a singular or pure form in these instances is easily recognised as an illusory generalization. The same multiplicity must likewise be acknowledged with respect to neoliberalism, so that we may speak of ‘neoliberalisms,’ or ‘neoliberalism with Cambodian characteristics,’ as grounded examples of the variegations and mutations of theory in practice, rather than of neoliberalism as bulldozer from some mysterious external dimension.

In what is presented to her audience as an ostensibly revelatory moment of ‘I told you so,’ Thavat suggests that, “from the top-down neoliberalism may seem like an inevitable and unstoppable juggernaut unleashed from its regulatory masters of government, and conspiring against basic human rights. But from the bottom up, the construction of the private sector is laboured, uncertain and often failing.” The question here though is ‘so what’? This statement offers nothing new under the sun in terms of the way neoliberalisation operates, whether in Cambodia or elsewhere. In fact, despite her unavailing attempts to paint neoliberalism as a monolithic force, she inadvertently acknowledges what geographers working on neoliberalisation have long recognised: that there is no pure or paradigmatic form of neoliberalism, where instead it is always shot through with contradictions and inconsistencies. Neoliberalism in actual practice is a mutated, hybridised, and protean assemblage that always deviates from neoliberalism as an ideology. This is in fact one of the primary reasons why there is so much resistance to neoliberalism. In other words, people in various parts of the globe have coordinated street protests precisely because neoliberalism does not function in actually existing circumstances in the same way that its economic theory says it will. The utopia that has been promised via market reforms and the ‘trickle down effect’ has failed to materialise, which doesn’t mean that neoliberal ideas haven’t been adopted by governments, including the Royal Government of Cambodia, it simply means that neoliberal ideas write a cheque for society that the people can never cash. Why? Because neoliberalism allows elites to informally manage the process of marketisation, which effectively gives them unofficial license to asset strip society as former communal and state holdings are sold to the private market, where in the Cambodian instance, patron-client relations mediate privatisation though successful bids on contracts, which inevitably go to those ‘on the inside’ so to speak (see Le Billon and Springer 2007; Springer 2010a).

Thavat’s misunderstandings go even deeper when she attempts to discredit the idea that neoliberalism has penetrated the political economy of Cambodia by suggesting that the continuing presence of the Cambodian state is in and of itself ‘proof’ that neoliberalism is irrelevant. She correctly indicates that “the state is plainly everywhere in Cambodia. For those who have lived in Cambodia the unavoidable inconvenience is that the state permeates almost all forms of everyday life.” I do not take issue with this statement, as contra popular representations, neoliberalism is not in fact diametrically opposed to the state. Nonetheless, Thavat directly quotes my argument which cautions that interpreting neoliberalism as tantamount to economic reform overlooks its capacity as a political order (Springer 2009c), and then sarcastically quips, “Apparently, neoliberalism can now also mean an extension of the state.” This kind of derisive argumentation carries little weight, as Thavat never gets around to explaining how or why neoliberalism might be considered inimical to the state. We are instead encouraged to take her ‘witty’ dismissal at face value. Discourse analysis has allowed scholars to appreciate the internalisation of neoliberal logics not simply at the level of the state, but also at various institutional and even individual or embodied scales. In contrast to the doctrinaire interpretation Thavat promotes, there now exists a considerable literature on neoliberalism which foregrounds the role of governmentality (see Ferguson and Gupta 2002; Larner 2000; Lemke 2001; Mitchell 2006; Ong 2006; Springer 2010b). Thus, while the basic tenet of neoliberalism in theory is that it involves less rather than more government interference, its actual practice as neoliberalisation is a much different beast. Neoliberalism is now more accurately regarded as a process of transformation purposefully engaged by states to remain economically competitive within an international milieu. It proceeds along both a quantitative axis of destruction and discreditation entailing the ‘roll back’ of state capacities, and a qualitative axis of construction and consolidation, which sees the ‘roll out’ of reconfigured economic management systems, and an invasive social agenda centered on urban order, securitisation, surveillance, and policing (Peck 2001; Peck and Tickell 2002), elements of governance that are unmistakable in contemporary Cambodia (see Springer 2009b, 2010a).

To lend credence to her argument that neoliberalism is supposedly irrelevant in the Cambodian context, Thavat argues, “the kleptocratic government elite of Cambodia further entrench their positions of power through more than simply economic means. The ‘shadow state’ that emerged under the UNTAC period has grown large and casts a very dark and foreboding shadow indeed (Hughes 2000).” Despite having laughed off the idea that neoliberalism has a political component to its makeup—which her preceding statement actually accommodates as I have in fact argued that the kleptocratic means of the shadow state are instrumental in the character of Cambodian neoliberalisation (Springer 2009c, 2010a)—Thavat consolidates her confusion by perpetuating the idea that neoliberalism is nothing more than an economic program. It is a true testament to her selective reading of my argument that Thavat quotes Hughes in this instance, rather than citing my own work on the shadow state in Cambodia. She further relates Hughes’ (2006) account of gift giving within local political economic practice, but fails to consider how in her recent book, Hughes (2009: 8 ) in fact adopts elements of my argument, even if I am curiously never cited. Specifically, Hughes (2009: 8, 31) contends that “the intrusions of donors take place within a neoliberal framework that works against the prospects for popular participation in a public sphere of political engagement and debate,” and she further argues that the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party used “the advent of a neoliberal aid regime in the early 1990s as a means to shore up its crumbling patrimonial structures.” The problem with Hughes (2009: 3) account is that she actually does treat neoliberalism as a monolithic juggernaut, suggesting that neoliberalism “function[s] as a political straitjacket.” If neoliberalism were actually understood and applied in the literature in the reductionist way that Hughes uses the term, then perhaps elements of Thavat’s critique might actually make some sense. Unfortunately, as should by now be clear, understandings of neoliberalism are far more sophisticated than either scholar seems to recognise.

But Thavat’s confusions don’t even end there. In attempting to dissuade the idea that neoliberalism has had any impact upon contemporary Cambodia, she plays into what I have dubbed the discourse of “the Angkorian present,” by problematically asserting that “Cambodia’s current political structure… draws on traditions which hark back to the empire of Angkor and draw on cosmological forces.” I have actually addressed this idea head on in my previous work (Springer 2009a: 314) in arguing that:

Such invocations of the past are… fashioned as moments of revelation, where through the swiftness of analytic movement from past to present, we are encouraged to overlook the preposterous contortion of space-time. Cambodia now is configured as Cambodia then, and the Angkorian present is called into being through the suspension of temporality. … Yet such a culturalist position cannot adequately account for the socio-cultural disarticulation wrought by 30 years of civil war, American bombing and autogenocide. Under these conditions, how could Cambodians cling to a ‘traditional’ socio-political organisation in spite of the profound violence and upheaval of their lives? Chandler (2008) paints a picture of hierarchy and violence in the Angkorian era, but he also recognises that the Khmer Rouge regime served as an historical disconnect from earlier eras of Cambodian history. It was not a complete erasure of the past and return to ‘Year Zero’ as Pol Pot claimed, but given the mayhem of the time, how could the Khmer Rouge era be anything but a disjuncture? The very social, political and economic fabric of Cambodian life was torn apart by a murderous revolution that found its logic not in the grandeur of Angkorian kings, but in a geopolitical malaise of extreme paranoia, distorted egalitarianism and American bombs (Kiernan 2004). Moreover, Cambodian culture underwent profound changes through the processes and associated violences of French colonisation (Osborne 1997), and thus regardless of the upheaval of the Khmer Rouge period, it is absurd to suggest that Cambodian political culture has passed through 1200 years of history virtually unchanged. This shows a remarkably unsophisticated view of culture, presenting it as a static concept, when the anthropological work of the last two decades has made great gains in illustrating that if there is one ‘true’ thing to be said about culture, it is its dynamic character (Clifford 1988; Gupta and Ferguson 1997).

Yet Thavat evidently felt that none of these considerations were worth pointing out, perhaps because they cannot be reconciled with the caricature she seems so intent on painting. Rather than coming to terms with the ways in which Cambodia’s societal processes, cultural patterns, economic ideas, and political ideologies have been radically transformed through monumental ruptures in its historical trajectory, and how these factors continue to evolve at all scales of analysis through ongoing negotiations and contestations of processes like neoliberalisation, Thavat presents us with a temporal gloss. Ongoing political economic patterns and sociocultural processes that are continually reshaping our world be damned, because to Thavat, that what was, is now, and forever will be. Accordingly, she views neoliberalism as nothing more than a perverse generalization suggesting, “it is perhaps a sufficient term to describe an overall ideological framework or policy mode of many western governments at a unique point in history.” As already mentioned, Thavat is correct that neoliberalism is an abstraction, but it only functions as such through a rendering that she problematically perpetuates by presenting neoliberalism as a singular and fully realised policy regime, ideological form, or regulatory framework. Instead, cutting edge inquiries into neoliberalism demand that ‘actually existing neoliberalisms’ are considered as plural and mutable geohistorical outcomes, embedded within national, regional, and local process of market-driven socio-spatial transformation (Brenner and Theodore 2002).

Finally, to make my message as clear as possible, it is important to understand that a straw man argument proceeds through the following general pattern:

Person A has position X.

Person B disregards certain key elements of position X and instead presents the superficially similar position Y.

Position Y thus represents a distorted version of position X based on a misrepresentation and oversimplification of Person A’s actual argument.

Person B then attacks position Y, concluding that position X is false, incorrect, or flawed.

Understanding this to be the case, and applying it to the current issue at hand we accordingly have the following scenario:

Springer maintains that neoliberalism is never a pure or finished project, but instead represents a variegated, dynamic, and ongoing process of market-driven socio-spatial transformation, which proceeds as a series of articulations within actually existing political economic circumstances. Existing political economic arrangements and institutional frameworks necessarily have implications for the uptake and unfolding of neoliberalism in various spatial settings, and as such, to speak of neoliberalism in the sense of a singular idea is an abstraction. Springer recognises neoliberalism, not as an end-state, but as a diverse series of protean, promiscuous, and processual phenomena occurring both ‘out there’ and ‘in here,’ with differing and uneven effects, yet retaining the indication of an overarching ‘logic’ due to its diffusion across space (Peck and Tickell 2002). Springer encourages a geographical theorisation though the emergent language of ‘neoliberalisation’ (England and Ward 2007; Springer 2010c) in recognising neoliberalism’s hybridised, polychromatic, and mutated forms as it travels around our world. Such an understanding of neoliberalisation appreciates the consequences of inherited historical contexts, geographical landscapes, institutional frameworks, policy regimes, regulatory practices, and ongoing political struggles as continually redefining neoliberalism through processes of articulation (Peck 2001; Smith 2007). While neoliberalism entails the ‘roll back’ of state capacities in the domain of social welfare and places a substantive focus on market relations and the transfer of public holdings over to the private sector of corporate interest, it also proceeds through the ‘roll out’ of reconfigured forms of governance that introduce new state capabilities of surveillance, ‘expert’ managerial systems, and a bellicose social agenda, wherein the poor and marginalised are coerced into a flexible labour regime of low-wage employment and perilous work.

Thavat willfully disregards the notion that neoliberalism articulates with existing political economic frameworks and institutional matrixes, purposefully overlooks neoliberalism’s capacity to produce new patterns of governance and reconfigure state forms, sneers at the idea that elites adopt elements of neoliberal discourse and mediate its actual implementation in adapting neoliberalism to meet particular characteristics that suit their own interests, and refers to such sophisticated theorisations of neoliberalism as “disingenuous.” Instead Thavat presents the superficially similar idea that neoliberalism is a juggernaut imposed exclusively from the ‘outside,’ that it is a detached economic theory with no political content, that it has no relation to the state other than through attempting to rescind it, and that neoliberalism is ultimately a “bogeyman” figure.

Thavat’s position represents a distorted version of neoliberalism based on a misrepresentation and oversimplification of Springer’s actual argument and a complete disregard for the actual literature on neoliberalism.

Thavat then attacks her own pale version of neoliberalism, concluding that Springer’s position is false, incorrect, or flawed.

In the end, Thavat seems to have entirely absorbed and regurgitated the unsophisticated understanding of neoliberalism that pervades in the mainstream media, while ignoring altogether the penetrating and precise theoretical and empirical analysis that scholars have advanced through accounts of neoliberalisation. ‘Neoliberalism with Cambodian characteristics’ is not an “excuse” for anything; rather it is an attempt to come to terms with the ways in which a globally circulating and manifold political economic discourse has been taken up, resisted, and altered within and through the local practices and circumstances of existing institutional arrangements, political structures, and socioeconomic frameworks in contemporary Cambodian society. Thavat’s uncanny willingness to sweep aside the multiple ways in which neoliberalism articulates on the ground allows her to construct neoliberalism as a straw man. Yet by attempting to burn neoliberalism as an effigy, what Thavat has actually lit on fire is her own credibility as a serious academic. It is one thing to critique the way that neoliberalism has been used in the literature, something that I welcome and have myself participated in (see Springer 2008, 2010c), but one would expect that at the very least, the individual making the critique would have read and understood that literature.

[Simon Springer is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Geography at the University of Otago. He was previously an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore. He has been conducting research in Cambodia for the best part of the last decade and has published extensively on the relationship between violence and neoliberalism both as a theoretical exercise, and through the empirical lens of Cambodia. Simon is the author of Cambodia’s Neoliberal Order: Violence, Authoritarianism, and the Contestation of Public Space published by Routledge.]

Springer, S. (2009a). Culture of violence or violent Orientalism? Neoliberalization and imagining the ‘savage other’ in posttransitional Cambodia. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34, 305-319.

Springer, S. (2009b). The neoliberalization of security and violence in Cambodia’s transition. In Peou, S. ed. Human Security in East Asia: Challenges for Collaborative Action. Routledge, New York, 125-141.

Springer, S. (2009c). Violence, democracy, and the neoliberal ‘order’: the contestation of public space in post-transitional Cambodia. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99, 138-162.

Springer, S. (2010a). Cambodia’s Neoliberal Order: Violence, Authoritarianism, and the Contestation of Public Space. Routledge, London

I find this to be quite an ill-tempered response to what are legitimate questions with Springer’s reading of Cambodia’s political economy.

Simon: why not engage with with Maylee’s reaction to your work on the empirical issue of political-economic transition in Cambodia, instead of citing a bunch of other scholars on the definition of neoliberalisation?

Also, not sure that berating other (senior) researchers for not citing your work is such a great strategy.

I agree that this review is rather mean-spirited. Maylee appears to have legitimate questions about those elements of state and power relations that appear to contradict the major tenets of neoliberalism. You argue as if the debate is over, and that there is no question that neoliberalism/ization should be thought about this way or that.

Few will argue that neoliberalism has biopolitical power. The question Maylee seemed to be asking (and I doubt she would be the only one) was whether neoliberalism is an adequate way of framing Cambodian political economic realities or not. The point is to explain these realities. Is neoliberalism the right characterization of power/governmentality in explaining the Cambodian state?

Insisting on neoliberalism as a framing is a discursive/theoretical straitjacket in itself. The one size fits all problem here is not so much Maylee’s understanding of neoliberalism, but your insistence that neoliberalism explains every little twist. I doubt Castree, Gupta, Ferguson et al would defend a teleological perspective on neoliberalism. In fact, I find it rather offensive and ironic that you rally these critical anthropologists, who have fought to question the disciplinary (and colonizing) straitjacket of ethnography (in the anthropological sense), to your cause, one that insists that it’s neoliberalism or nothing.

It seems like you yourself have set up Maylee Thavat as your own strawman, instead of engaging with her points.

"“Apparently, neoliberalism can now also mean an extension of the state.” This kind of derisive argumentation carries little weight, as Thavat never gets around to explaining how or why neoliberalism might be considered inimical to the state."

Perhaps she has been misled by the meaning and use of the term “Liberalism” since 1819 –or the broader political meaning of “Liberal” since 1800. Those terms did explicitly denote an ideology of what was called limited government –and of limited constitutional monarchy in countries that had monarchs. Thomas Hobbes, you’ll note, defines freedom as the silence of the laws: only areas that the state does not govern, and does not enjoin any law upon one way or another, are “free”. Thus, freedom of religion means that the government resolves to write no law whatsoever on religion, one way or the other. Sound familiar? This was an original idea, at one time (and you won’t find it in Plato). It is needless to say that contemporary figures like Tony Blair do not read (and have not been influenced by) historical figures like Hobbes (d. 1679), Mandeville (d. 1733) and Montesquieu (d. 1755). However, this is the pre-history that explains why so many people assume that neo-liberalism would suggest a principle of limited government, etc. (as did the term “liberalism” for over 200 years before it).

The contemporary usage and (de facto) meaning of neo-liberalism has arisen in direct contrast to neo-conservatism –and the continuity between these two terms is much stronger than the (difficult-to-discern) relationship between neo-liberalism and the “liberal” politics of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

The complaint that "...the unsophisticated understanding of neoliberalism that pervades in the mainstream media..." is invalid rather cuts against the human reality of how meaning arises and persists in contemporary language. Many of the political advocates of neo-liberalism are certainly guilty of making very pliant and pliable use of the meaning of the term (such as Tony Blair himself, in print, in The Stakeholder Society etc.).

Sure, questioning the compatibility of “neo-liberalism” with the extension of state power is a legitimate intellectual exercise (for Thavat or anyone else) –and it is precisely the implications of “…the unsophisticated understanding of neoliberalism…” used by the press and by politicians themselves that is worth contesting.

In terms of a “straw man argument”, nobody is contesting "that ‘neoliberalism’ itself is an abstraction".

How is it not important to actually understand the term under debate here? If you’re trying to say something “does” or “does not” work as a theoretical frame, how can one get by without a sophisticated understanding of that theory? I don’t see the harm in clarifying the misrepresentations that were made of my work. In terms of the empirical content, it’s in my published work, and I’ve recently written an even more fine-grained analysis, which should be published soon.

Also, I shared my work on neoliberalism in Cambodia with Hughes as early as 2005 in the form of my MA thesis and even discussed doing my PhD under her, so it strikes me as odd that I was not cited in this case. Nonetheless, I think there is a very wide gulf between being curious about something and “berating” someone. That’s not even a fair statement.

Concerned…

Again, you’re misrepresenting what I have to say. I make no “insistence that neoliberalism explains every little twist”, nor do I suggest it’s “neoliberalism or nothing”. Instead, I suggest that neoliberalism is able to account for many of the issues that currently exist in contemporary Cambodian society, and it is impetuous to throw the baby out with the bathwater when there is a great deal of explanatory power behind the concept. There is nothing “teleological” about that.

Could not help wondering under which disciplinary rationalities Simon’s subjectivation took place, and what truth claims he has been memorizing ever since, thereby creating the rules of conduct for writing this kind of response…

Excellent rejoinder Simon! Neo-liberalism is nothing if not a mode of governmentality: that is, a mentality and means of rule outside and below the state but what about governing life, the self and Cambodian-Khmer forms of subjectivity?

“Through increased tensions between the rich and poor, and the intensification of policing, surveillance, and `security’ measures that arise from such strained relations, as has become increas-
ingly manifest in posttransitional Cambodia (Springer, 2010), neoliberal modalities will slowly become recognizable and undesirable in the everyday lives of individuals,
invoking new discursive performatives that may provoke a chain reaction of awakening from the spell of the prevailing commonsense.
This process may not necessarily occur on a rational and self-aware level for many Cambodians, but this is of little conse-
quence. As the mutations of new subjectivities contort and twist subjectivation away from neoliberalism, transformed discursive formations will circulate and begin to usurp the existing orthodoxy.”

“…I suggest that neoliberalism is able to account for many of the issues that currently exist in contemporary Cambodian society, and it is impetuous to throw the baby out with the bathwater…”

—-

Compare with:

“Violence, Democracy, and the Neoliberal “Order”: The Contestation of Public Space in Posttransitional Cambodia.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 99(1) 2009, pp. 138–162.

“This article argues that neoliberalization is a *foremost causal factor* in Cambodia’s inability to consolidate democracy, and further *explains why authoritarianism remains the principal mode of governance* among the country’s ruling elite, an inclination often elicited as violence.”

=======

From my perspective, I think the key debate lies in the difference between those two statements…

Yes, neoliberalism is able to account for many of the issues that currently exist in contemporary Cambodian society, such that I have indeed argued that neoliberalization is paramount in Cambodia’s inability to consolidate democracy, and has been instrumental in how and why authoritarianism remains the principal mode of governance. Forced evictions to make way for hotels, casinos, and other mega-projects, land grabbing and irregular concessions to make way for large scale plantations, busting up garment factory protests, high profile murders of union leaders, widespread intimidation to keep labor prices low, all of this is so evidently authoritarian AND linked to neoliberal ideas of marketization, privatization, and deregulation. I’m not sure what discrepancy you see here, other than that you evidently disagree with my argument that neoliberalization is relevant to the contemporary political economy of Cambodia. So be it.

Asiawatcher…

Your claim that everyday Cambodians are of little concern in my work is completely unfounded, and referencing one of my papers that is specifically focused on elite, donor, and NGO constructions of neoliberal discourse in Cambodia doesn’t make it true. Also, the quote you have selected from my paper in no way proves or even so much as relates to your allegation. When I write “this process [of awakening from neoliberal ‘commonsense’] may not necessarily occur on a rational and self-aware level for many Cambodians, but this is of little consequence”, I am not implying that Cambodian identities/voices/ideas do not matter as you seem to assume. I am instead suggesting that in the process of contesting neoliberalism, its ideology, and its particular modalities, it is not necessary for Cambodians to be aware of the discourse of neoliberalism, they only need be aware of the effects neoliberalization produces. In this respect, many Cambodians will, and indeed already are, circulating ideas that break with neoliberal ‘commonsense’, so that they are no longer made ‘neoliberal subjects’. In other words, neoliberalism is not forever, in Cambodia, or anywhere else. The contemporary hegemony of neoliberalism is necessarily partial and incomplete, meaning it will inevitably fade and subjectivities will transform… a process made quicker by resistance, protests, and contestations, which are evident throughout Cambodia, but particularly acute in Phnom Penh.

Furthermore, the fact is, I have done extensive research with Cambodians from all economic backgrounds, the voices of which figure prominently in my book. More recently, in 2010, I was in Phnom Penh for several months conducting grassroots research with the homeless population. Obviously the lives of everyday Cambodians and their welfare is first and foremost in my research, otherwise why would I even bother doing the sort of work that I do? Surely it’s not so I can get some sort of perverse thrill out of defending myself against unfounded accusations made by someone hiding behind a pseudonym on the Internet. Good grief.

Sorry… but if forced evictions, land grabbing, murder, and political intimidation on behalf of private sector development are all consistent with neoliberalisation, then we could also discuss Than Shwe and a hegemonic neoliberal order in Burma ?!

I’m not suggesting there are no neoliberalization effects evident Cambodia. The garment industry/suppression of trade unions linked to export based industries; and urban real estate/tourism development, seem like appropriate examples where the concept of neoliberalisation holds some explanatory power.

But in other areas of the economy, perhaps especially in rural areas (including the areas that i study– the logging and and plantation forestry industries), I am much less convinced. There have been external neoliberal ‘actors’ at work in Cambodian forestry (e.g. World Bank), but, despite all the millions in donor funding, their actual influence has remained tenuous at best. The World Bank’s Forest Concession Management and Control Pilot Project (2000-2005) was truly a case study in the ineffectualness of neoliberal reformers.

There are some recent interesting examples of neoliberalisation at work in Cambodian forestry– e.g. recent experiments with community forestry/REDD in Oddar Meanchey; the recent approval of quite a number (400+) of decentralized community forestry sites; and one pilot project with commercial community forestry in Ratanakri. But these do not add up to a coherent neoliberal forestry regime in Cambodia, at least not at this point in time. In fact the Cambodian Forestry Administration has still not even completed the demarcation of the national forestry estate– which makes even the basic identification of what is legal or illegal timber in the country impossible.

In plantation forestry– similarly, if one were to describe a neoliberal order one would imagine large numbers of foreign and domestic investors governed through a competitive, market-based incentive framework, developing an export-based agricultural commodity sector. Yet, if one looks closely at what is happening in the Economic Land Concession system, it is really being governed through extra-economic means, and the actual rate of successful commercial agri-business ventures in this sector is surprisingly low. ELCs often seem to be more closely related to land speculation for other purposes, or at times a cover for illegal logging operations, and other irregularities are rife. At the present time, no significant multinational forestry/plantation operator has invested in the country, although some have shown recent interest.

Then one needs to decide whether all this adds up to a coherent hybrid neoliberal-authoritarian “order” on a nation-wide basis in Cambodia, or whether other conceptual frameworks offer more explanatory power.

I am more convinced by Hadiz and Robison’s 2005 discussion of the paradox of ‘Neoliberal Reform and Illiberal Consolidation in Indonesia’ for example, where they describe how “…market reforms have been resisted and even hijacked to consolidate predatory state and private oligarchies.” They conclude, perhaps pessimistically, that the building blocks for a regulatory state and a liberal order in Indonesia (let alone a neoliberal order) are “… virtually nowhere to be found.”

But perhaps it all comes down to, as my father likes to say, where you wish to place your emPHAsis.

I’m not a Burma expert by any means, but the country has been isolated from international happenings for such a long time that I can’t see a linkage to neoliberalization there. Again, I’m not suggesting there is a direct relationship between neoliberalization and any given phenomenon, it is always context specific. There is a pattern of marketization in Cambodia that gives resonance to particular incidents of eviction… so we can ask what are the motivations behind forced removals in Phnom Penh or Sihanoukville. Surely someone is making a hell of a lot of money by dispossessing people, otherwise why are they doing it? There could be other reasons, but in the case of Cambodia, the relationship is pretty clear.

I’ve been doing research with a community in Sihanoukville and the reason for their eviction is nothing more than land speculation because they lived in an area close to the beach that was slated for “development”. Most of them lived there for 25 years without being questioned, and then 3 years ago their homes were burned and they were forced off the land at gun point by police and military officials. What kind of “development” is this, and who is it for? The only winner is some fat cat with connections to power who will eventually cash in by selling the land or developing it for tourism purposes. The people meanwhile have received no compensation and a series of unfulfilled promises of being relocated. They have lived the last 3 years in makeshift huts on the side of the road adjacent to where they used to live. Three of them have died (the youngest being a 20 year old woman) from respiratory problems because of the dust from vehicles driving by to go to the nearby beach. I first visited this beach in 2004 and it was effectively empty other than the community fishing there. In 2007 a few little huts were propped up, and I talked to a woman at that time who admitted she was speculating on the land. She said she paid $10,000 and was hoping to sell in a few years for $30,000. In 2010 I went back again and there are now quite a few bungalow hotels and restaurants. So this particular eviction to me has a very clear relationship to neoliberalism.

In terms of what you describe in the forestry sector, this sounds to me like ‘neoliberalism with Cambodian characteristics’, which is a mutated, hybridized, and thoroughly contingent process that merges with existing political economic practices. Again, I’m not arguing for an overarching version of neoliberalism. Even American neoliberalism under Reagan or British neoliberalism under Thatcher are particular versions of neoliberalism, not paradigmatic cases. The Cambodian “neoliberal order” as I have called it, is an order because it has its own particular logic or rationality. The point is, contemporary political economic patterns in Cambodia are not simply ‘local’. There are a myriad of ‘global’ processes at play that influence and impact upon the existing circumstances in the country, the most prominent being, I argue, neoliberalism. In other words, take a political economy perspective that tries to account for the relationship between the ‘micro’ and the ‘macro’. So in terms of my emphasis, I see a disadvantage in focusing exclusively on the external or internal processes to the exclusion of the other. Of course one doesn’t ‘need’ neoliberalism to account for both, but given that Cambodian elites are plugged into globally circulating economic imperatives through relationships with donors, ASEAN, and other business networks, to me it is important to consider the influence this has in Cambodia, which you are quite correct to say in some instances is very overt, and in other instances might be quite limited. That speaks to how neoliberalism actually articulates in the country.

Fearfully dipping my toes into what is a serious sounding academic debate, could it be the difference is in what neoliberalism is meant to mean and what it means in practice? I doubt the preachers like Hayek would have accepted responsibility for all the crooks that have benefited from the application of their theories, but then again if you try to apply theories based on a past imagined golden age of capitalism today you will find these problems of greed.

So, neoliberalism, in fact, is a great thing. Only that bad people (who do not at all motivate their actions by the norms of neoliberalism) bring it into disrepute. Thus, the problem is how to replace “neoliberalism” in Cambodia with neoliberalism, just as one would like to replace “Thai-style democracy” with democracy. In other words, get the hybridity out of the system, stress the global in glocalization and in the global-local interface, and let the macro win over the micro…

Well that’s one way of looking at it, but certainly not a view that I would ever advocate. Neoliberalism as an economic theory is a utopian idea that can never be made pure or “unhybridized”, so its not just a matter of “bad apples” souring an ostensibly good idea. That is both a hypothetical and ideological question, and given my view on the nature of capitalism (i.e., a system premised upon exploitation), “neoliberalism with a smiling face” would potentially alleviate some of the issues, but the system itself (and its inherent inequalities) would nonetheless remain.

Readers of this thread might note that the prolific Simon Springer has recently continued this debate, and his aggressive critique of Maylee Thavat’s original New Mandala column, in the pages of the academic journal “Environment and Planning A.”

“…to dismiss neoliberalism as a `bogeyman’ figure (Thavat, 2010), demonstrates a remarkable lack of understanding for the processes of articulation whereby existing economic circumstances and institu-
tional frameworks are reconstituted as variable societal influences circulate and thereby transform neoliberalism into its `actually existing’ circumstances of neoliberalization. Worse still, such a view simplistically retrogrades the theoretical gains that geographers have made over the past decade in returning neoliberalism to an ill-conceived and ageographical `bulldozer effect’ by insisting that it is a singular, monolithic, and static phenomenon. But most deleterious of all is that condescending accounts like that of Thavat (2010) make no consideration of how retaining the abstraction of neoliberalism as a `global’ project albeit one that bites down in particular locales with a high degree of contextually specificity enables spatially diffuse
phenomena like poverty and inequality to find a point of similarity.”

—

However, Springer might note that it is not only Maylee Thavat (or me) who see some problems with charactering fast-developing East Asian states like Cambodia as prime examples of variegated or articulated neoliberalism/ neoliberalization in action.

Some senior scholars in the fields of economic geography (e.g. Eric Sheppard) and anthropology (e.g. Aihwa Ong) also seem to hold some similar reservations concerning applying the concept of variegated neoliberalism, in their cases to theorizing the state in China.

Eric Sheppard and Helga Leitner (2010: 188), write:

“… we cannot conclude that any increased state intervention promoting the market conforms with Peck and Tickell’ s definition of neoliberalization. In China, economic reform has undoubtedly unleashed market forces under the aegis of the Communist Party, and questions of governance and poverty reduction are of high priority. Yet it is far from clear that China can be characterized as a variegated form of neoliberalism. In the most influential Chinese discussion of neoliberalism in China available in English, Wang Hui argues that the result has been as much the enrollment of privatized production in the reproduction of state power, as the enrollment of state power in bringing about neoliberalization. ‘‘The state and neoliberalism exist in a complete state of co-dependence” (Wang, 2003, p. 60). Moreover, the Chinese state continues to invest heavily in infrastructure and takes an authoritarian approach to national economic management, hardly characteristics that typically are associated with either the Washington or the post-Washington consensus. Thus, Zhang and Ong characterize China as a distinct assemblage of neoliberalism and socialism rather than as variegated neoliberalism (Zhang and Ong, 2008).”

“There has been thus a tactical, contingent and selective appraisal of particular strategies and ideologies as a consequence of new international encounters, experiences learnt from previous cases of economic growth in East Asia, and an aim to preserve certain principles and power structures typical of the political culture of the Chinese state in the last 60 years. Ong and Zhang (2008: p. 4) characterize this as ‘socialism from afar’, by which certain strains of neoliberal ideology proliferate in symbiosis with socialist authoritarian rule.”

1. Cambodia is not China, and China is not Cambodia. I think we need to be very careful about the direct sort of comparison that you are attempting to make here, not only because of the problematic imaginative geographies invoked, but also because it should be clear that the contemporary and historical geopolitical circumstances of these two countries are very different in a whole host of ways. The implication is that neoliberalism is going to articulate and unfold in these contexts in unique ways that don’t lend themselves to conveying or contributing to a singular or paradigmatic neoliberalism.

2. Sheppard and Leitner (2010) conclude your selected quote with the sentence “Thus, Zhang and Ong characterize China as a distinct assemblage of neoliberalism and socialism rather than as variegated neoliberalism (Zhang and Ong, 2008).” Similarly, Gonzalez-Vicente (2011) writes, “certain strains of neoliberal ideology proliferate in symbiosis with socialist authoritarian rule.” Thus, rather than offering anything that unravels or contradicts my argument, you’ve actually complemented it. This is precisely the line I argue in my most recent paper ‘Articulated Neoliberalism: the Specificity of Patronage, Kleptocracy, and Violence in Cambodia’s Neoliberalization’, which explicitly refers to the assemblage between actually existing political economic circumstances and neoliberal imperatives, hence they are ‘articulated’. The proliferation of neoliberal ideology in symbiosis with socialist authoritarian rule is precisely the ‘articulation agenda’ that I attend to in this paper. Moreover, I think Sheppard and Leitner are splitting hairs when they refer to this assemblage between neoliberalism and socialist authoritarianism as something distinct from what could be considered a variegated form of neoliberalism. Perhaps my view of what constitutes ‘variegation’ is a little broader than theirs I’ll grant you that, but I feel I’m in good company (i.e., David Harvey, Jamie Peck, Neil Brenner, Adam Tickell, Nik Theodore etc.).

3. Drawing on Eric Sheppard to express your reservations is an interesting choice, not only because I think the article you have cited in many ways actually supports my arguments (even if Sheppard and Leitner have a narrower view of variegation than I do), but also for the fact that Sheppard actually acted as editor on my submission to ‘Environment and Planning A’. While I can’t claim that this means he necessarily or fully supports my argument, Sheppard evidently saw enough merit in it to accept it for publication in the journal.

4. I don’t work in certainties. If you’re inclined to read some of my theoretical work on anarchism, the fact that I’m all about processes rather than absolutes should become pretty obvious. I also have a paper coming out in the journal ‘Critical Discourse Studies’ called “Neoliberalism as Discourse: Between Foucauldian Political Economy and Marxian Poststructuralism” that makes my refusal to work in rigid certitudes clear. To the contrary, I simply happen to think that neoliberalism/neoliberalization is one of the best theoretical frames through which we can examine the unfolding circumstances of Cambodia’s contemporary political economy. When someone comes up with a more penetrating, robust and convincing analytical lens, I’ll be more than happy to get on board. Until then, dissensus and debate are welcome!

“The intellectual is called on the carpet. What do you mean when you say…? Don’t you conceal something? You talk a language, which is suspect. You don’t talk like the rest of us, like the man in the street, but rather like a foreigner who does not belong here. We have to cut you down to size, expose your tricks, purge you.”

If you’re so adverse to my style of writing that you don’t want to follow this debate, why even bother commenting here? Seems kind of pointless to me.

If you are so sensitive about reactions on your writing style, being adverse even to a small peace of advice about making what you want to say more understandable, why bother even calling up Marcuse to help defending you? I would just keep quiet instead.

I may have committed the sin of obscurity (24), so I should explain. A Sokalism is a piece of obscure, pseudo-scientific verbiage that Post Modernists pretend to understand. Alan Sokal exposed the whole movement to ridicule by submitting a paper deliberately stuffed with obscure terms with no meaning at all, and having it accepted by a high-status Post Modernist journal. If English is not your first language, and you are having trouble understanding some of the longer pieces in this thread, do not be discouraged! At least you are not deluding yourself.

Those interested in this thread should consider reading the article that Simon mentioned in his January post, entitled ‘Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy and Marxian poststructuralism’, which can be found here:

It seems to me that the disagreement on this thread stems from the failure (inflammatory as that word will surely prove) of some commenters to truly grasp a few fundamental points of Simon’s argument. There is a reason for all the claims that his detractors are in fact substantiating his view, but I cannot explain it without repeating what he has said numerous times…

Neoliberalisation plays out differently in every country that practices a measure of it. The same can be said for so much else, and a good example – one which Simon provides – is colonialism. Therefore, to confer upon a country the identity of either a practitioner or eschewer of neoliberal policies and governmentalities (while treating those identities as mutually exclusive) based on the resemblance of that country’s society and economy to an imagined “pure” or “paradigmatic” incarnation of neoliberalism is quite crude. It is this desire to embed sub-national realities in a preconceived ideal form of neoliberalism that Simon’s detractors on this thread appear reluctant to let go of. He, on the other hand, has let go of it, and in this too he is in good company: as Philip Cerny (2008) writes:

“neoliberalism is not a seamless web doctrinally and discursively. It is not only a contested concept in theoretical terms but also a highly internally differentiated concept, made up of a range of linked but discrete subcategories and dimensions. These subcategories and dimensions […] can be manipulated and orchestrated in different ways by political actors, leading to a much larger spectrum of strategic options, policy prescriptions and de facto practices than the original conservative version of neoliberalism would suggest […] Neoliberalism is increasingly what actors make of it.”

I’m not sure its really possible to continue to engage with Springer on the issue of whether or not the concept of Neoliberalism/neoliberalisation represents the dominant organizational mode of power in Cambodia, or the most useful way to understand Cambodia’s political economy.

If you follow the argument, in the paper listed above, Neoliberalism as Discourse, Simon Springer would be required to agree that neoliberalisation exists in Cambodia at least in part because Simon Springer writes about neoliberalisation and neoliberal representations in Cambodia.

I recently found this discussion, and I have found it fascinating. I think Simon and Maylee should both be congratulated for sparking such a spirited debate, and for the contribution both have made to Cambodian studies with their work in this field. Readers might also want to look at Erik Davis’s blog, where he writes about primitive accumulation/accumulation by dispossession in the context of Cambodia.
Seeing myself both cited and slated in the above, I wanted to make a couple of comments on my own position.
First, I am slightly surprised, Simon, that in our correspondence over the years you have never mentioned to me any perceived slight that I have not cited your work. The only piece of yours I had read when I completed the manuscript for my 2009 book in 2007 was your MA dissertation, which I had looked at a year or two earlier. I very much enjoyed reading your dissertation, but I didn’t and don’t regard my 2009 book as owing any intellectual debt to it: that’s why I didn’t cite it. I don’t believe I have adopted elements of your position, unless you think that my greater interest in my 2009 book, as compared to my earlier work, in neoliberal donor policies is down to your MA dissertation. It isn’t – it is because the 2009 book is a comparative study of two countries that there is a greater emphasis on the neoliberal policies urged by donors, which were similar in both Cambodia and East Timor, although the government response to and/or cooptation of these was of course very different, which is of course an aspect of the issue in contention here.
Second, I think you have misrepresented my position somewhat. The full sentence you cite above reads, “The promotion of the neoliberal peace offers an array of opportunities to different local actors, but it can also function as a political straitjacket that limits the potential for the emergence of a national public sphere that can provide a setting for deliberation and accommodation.” I don’t really see what you would disagree with in that. Indeed, your point, as I understand it, follows David Harvey ad others in suggesting that neoliberalism as a political project is capable of taking on a variety of guises, even ones that conflict quite fundamentally with its own ideological dictates, let alone with democracy, because its ultimate end is neither free markets nor democratic citizenship but the domination of one class by another. I think this is great stuff but the question of where, then, neoliberalism ends and other forms of development begin is one that I don’t think you have answered (I’m sure you will correct me if I’m wrong in that). And the proposition that neoliberalisations can take different forms doesn’t alter the fact that donor policies towards post-conflict reconstruction in Cambodia and East Timor were in key respects rather similar.
One final remark: Cambodian Studies has a long history of conducting academic debates in an ill-natured manner, in which points of intellectual disagreement are shackled together with personal slurs. That seemed to have died away somewhat over the past few years, and it would be a shame if it came back. I am sure we are all committed to the same thing – a better understanding of contemporary Cambodia and the prospects for an end to the new depradations being visited on the Cambodian poor.

Concerned: “Insisting on neoliberalism as a framing is a discursive/theoretical straitjacket in itself. The one size fits all problem here is not so much Maylee’s understanding of neoliberalism, but your insistence that neoliberalism explains every little twist.”

Exactly. “Neoliberalism” , “Amat” are polemical chameleon bogeyman terms with ultraflexible definitions applied to any or every target of criticism.

The disciplines of history and journalism at least put the actual details of the events of exploitation first, for all to see and sympathize with. even “neoliberalists” (or those caught up in the system, most of us) who have sympathy for landless Cambodians and their plight and would support action to improve their situation. This whole thread is almost a case study of how academics make themselves obscure and irrelevant to society as a whole.

[that is given the definition: “Neoliberalism is a contemporary political movement advocating economic liberalizations, free trade and open markets. Neoliberalism supports the privatization of nationalized industries, deregulation, and enhancing the role of the private sector in modern society.” Source: Wikipedia]

Your point has been made repeatedly and is fully understood. You don’t like my work, and unfortunately such is life. I can’t please everyone.

Caroline…

Thank you for your comments here, they are very much appreciated. I never felt slighted about my work not being cited. I found it odd that Maylee had gone to your work to make a point about my own, and given your engagement with neoliberalism I simply found it curious that some of my own writing had not been incorporated into your recent work as obviously Cambodian studies is a small circle of people and those writing about neoliberalism in Cambodia are even fewer. No hard feelings whatsoever, and thanks for taking the time to clarify here. I think Keith Barney’s suggestion that I was somehow “berating” you was extremely unfair as I have a great deal of respect and admiration for your work. In terms of adopting elements of my argument, my only meaning was that we share similar views on the contemporary political economy of Cambodia, and your incorporation of neoliberal concerns into your more recent work parallels my own. I clearly should have worded this more carefully.

With regards to your passage…

“The promotion of the neoliberal peace offers an array of opportunities to different local actors, but it can also function as a political straitjacket that limits the potential for the emergence of a national public sphere that can provide a setting for deliberation and accommodation.”

…I would actually disagree with the wording you have chosen here as to me it is too suggestive of constraint with respect to the contestation of public space/sphere, when really – as we have both recognized elsewhere in our work – there has been significant resistance among Cambodians, including numerous public protests. You reuse this idea of a “political straitjacket” on page 45 of your book where you suggest East Timor was “confined within a straitjacket on neoliberal policy development”, which sounds like there is no way out. This seems to rub up against the “monolithic neoliberalism” arguments I find so problematic, because of course another world, and another Cambodia, are in fact possible… despite the “there is no alternative” mantra that continues to circulate even as it is being actively undone by things like the Occupy Movement. So it is this particular “straitjacket” turn of phrase that I’m uncomfortable with, as the way you have described this process here in your post is, as you say, something I would very much agree with. And of course you are right, the notion of ‘neoliberalization’ does not undo the similarities between Cambodia and East Timor, which is precisely why neoliberalism remains a useful analytical construct. In another recent paper called ‘Neoliberalism and Geography: Expansions, Variegations, Formations’, I contend that “The current moment of global capitalism, variegated, hybridized, protean, and processual as it may be under neoliberalism, remains the same heartless brute it has always been. So while neoliberalism as a ‘radical theoretical slogan’ (Peck 2004: 403) undoubtedly comes with limitations… [we can nonetheless] engage it as a reference point in building solidarity and uniting diverse struggles against the disciplining, exploitative, and dominating structures of capitalism”. This is precisely why it troubles me that Maylee and others so adamantly refuse to concede that employing this ‘radical theoretical slogan’ within the context of studying Cambodia’s contemporary political economy may actually have not only some explanatory potential, but more importantly, some emancipatory potential.

In terms of where neoliberalism ends and other forms of development begin, this is something I do actually attempt to answer in my recent paper “Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy and Marxian poststructuralism”, which Alex Martin provides a link to above. See specifically page 142, but of course this is not going to satisfy my detractors and those with an anti-poststructuralist mindset.

And as for your last point on the historical and current state of Cambodian studies, I’m in complete agreement with you here too. I’m also fully willing to admit that in my original entry, I was probably a little too hard on Maylee.

Don’t mean to overstay my welcome, but readers of this thread might be interested to peruse:

Gainsborough, Martin (2010). “Present but not Powerful: Neoliberalism, the State, and Development in Vietnam.” Globalizations.
Volume 7, Issue 4.

ABSTRACT

“Through a case study of Vietnam, this paper explores what happens to neoliberal ideas about development when they encounter the very different political and cultural context of a developing country. The paper argues that although much scholarship tends implicitly or explicitly to emphasise the very great power of neoliberal institutions in our world today, an analysis of continuity and change in Vietnam during two decades of extensive engagement with neoliberal actors suggests that the influence of neoliberalism on the working of the Vietnamese state has been relatively small. The paper seeks both to document and explain this through an account which is attentive to both structure and agency and which in turn sheds new light on the nature of power in our world.”

—

p. 476: “My research on Vietnam dating back to the very early reform years places me firmly in the camp of those who question the power of neoliberalism, specifically leading me to argue that despite 20 years of reform, which has involved extensive engagement with a wide range of neoliberal actors, the state in Vietnam remains little changed in terms of its underlying political philosophy and many of its practices.”

You’re right Ralph… Keith Barney’s ongoing posting of various articles that argue against neoliberalism and contradict my position can be met with an equal number of articles calling for a perspective that includes neoliberalism. Such tit for tat is a pretty boring way to proceed, so it seems this discussion has run its course as all of our positions are very clear at this point. I’m clearly not going to convince Keith, and Keith has not presented me with anything that is going to convince me. As my good friend Carl Grundy-Warr always says, peaceful vibes.

Srithanonchai, we learned not to conduct arguments in this way when we were in school. You are gnawing away at what you like to imagine Simon is saying, rather than engaging with what he is actually saying. It’s pettiness like this that has turned things farcical, where there was once a recognisable academic debate.

Maratjp: Yes, Kissinger is (in)appropriate here, for he considered academic debates small, but was as happy as can be bombing the shit out of small countries like Cambodia. Mass murder seems like a matter worthy of academic debate and a court somewhere.

James Ferguson’s article on neoliberalism is pretty good. Also I think this whole thread of comments is the best example of self-voting in the history of New Mandala. I think Keith Barney’s responses here are best because they seem moderate, rational and not emotionally driven, but who knows if that’s the case! Maybe there’s an undecurrent of neo-hate. This whole debacle could form the basis of a Khmer TV soap opera with more-than-usual histrionics. Probably could be funded by some neo-liberals, too.